How many Khoas are there in the world?

No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Khoa are estimated to be alive in the US today.

How do you spell Khoa?

Khoa is one of 4 recorded spellings. Koa is the more common one — 1,281 births in 2025 against 23 for Khoa.

How popular is the name Khoa in 2025?

Khoa ranks #4396 among US boy names in 2025, with 23 babies given the name.

How rare is the name Khoa?

About 1 in every 74,264 US boys born in 2025 was named Khoa — 23 in all.

Will my child share the name Khoa with classmates?

Khoa will almost certainly be the only one in school.

Khoa

Masculine · “learning”

Khoa is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 817 boys against 5 girls since 1880.

#4396 in the U.S.given to only a few children a year

rare23 boys in 2025

Khoa is the Vietnamese word for a branch of learning, and it names the imperial examinations that ran for nine centuries.

How old is the name Khoa?

Khoa first appears in US birth records in 1976 — 49 years ago. The typical Khoa alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 800 people named Khoa are estimated to be alive in the US today.

When was the name Khoa most popular?

Khoa peaked in 1985, reaching #1975 nationally. Today it ranks #4396, 2,421 places below that high. See the whole 1985 chart.

Compare this name More “K” names

Lists built from the same records:

Where it comes from

Origin, sound and short forms

The story of Khoa

Vietnam ran a Confucian examination system from 1075 to 1919 — nearly nine hundred years — and the names of successful candidates were cut into stone stelae at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, where eighty-two of them still stand. Khoa is the word for the examination and for a field of study. The name is used for boys in Vietnam and reaches American records with Vietnamese families.

Meaning

learning, examination, faculty

From Sino-Vietnamese khoa, a course of study or a branch of knowledge; khoa học is science and khoa thi an examination. The word belongs to the vocabulary of the Confucian examination system.

Pronouncing Khoa

KWAH

One syllable with a tone in Vietnamese; the kh is a throat sound English lacks.

Nicknames for Khoa

Moderate

KoAn English-language approximation used at American schools

KInitial-only

What the data says

146 years of official birth records

The long climb, and where it stands now

The same years in position rather than babies

First recorded: 1976
Most boys named: 198529 — the highest on record
Peak rank: #1975reached in 1985
Change vs 2024: +21.1%23 in 2025, from 19

Khoa sits in the rare tail. Its best year on record was 1985, with 29 boys. Today it is given to few enough children that it does not enter the ranked charts at all.

Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.

Khoa in other languages

The same name elsewhere

Khoa in Vietnamese — same name
科 in Chinese — related form

Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas.

Khoas among us

800

people named Khoa are estimated to be alive in the US today

About 1 boy in 74,264 born in 2025 was named Khoa

Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method

Spellings of Khoa

#4396
Khoa on the 2025 chart: #230
counting every spelling

The SSA counts spellings, not names. Khoa went to 23 boys in 2025, but Koa, Koah and Coa are the same name said out loud. Together the 5 spellings went to 1,581, which makes it the 230th most-given boys’ name of the year — 4,166 places above the chart.

Koa1,281
Koah260
Khoa23
Coa10

and 1 rarer spelling.

About 1 boy in 1,080 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 74,264 for Khoa itself.

Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method

III

Is it right for you

What happens to a name after it peaks

The Kenard test

Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Khoa's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kenard climbed just as high around 1964, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kenard's path sketches the road Khoa is walking now.

40%chance Khoa will feel dated by 2040

Khoa, aligned on its peakKenard· peak 1964not yet written

Khoa today is about where Kenard stood in 2004 — 40 years past a #1975-sized peak. By 2019, Kenard had settled around #10821.

Ages quietlysteadyDates fast

Khoa sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.

A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored

Khoa beside its neighbors

The names ranked closest to Khoa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.

Khoathis name23#4396Odell23#4396Corwin23#4396Tennyson23#4396Marques23#4396

US boys given each name in 2025.

The trade-off

Practical strengths

A settled meaning with a genuinely remarkable institutional history behind it.
Four letters and one syllable, quick to write.
Immediately understood by any Vietnamese speaker.

What to consider

The kh is a throat sound and the tone is lost entirely in English.
English readers will say KOH-ah, giving it two syllables.
It is entirely unfamiliar outside Vietnamese communities in America.

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Khoa

Masculine · #4396 in the U.S.

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Frequently asked

How many Khoas are there in the world?: No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Khoa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
How do you spell Khoa?: Khoa is one of 4 recorded spellings. Koa is the more common one — 1,281 births in 2025 against 23 for Khoa.
How popular is the name Khoa in 2025?: Khoa ranks #4396 among US boy names in 2025, with 23 babies given the name.
How rare is the name Khoa?: About 1 in every 74,264 US boys born in 2025 was named Khoa — 23 in all.
Will my child share the name Khoa with classmates?: Khoa will almost certainly be the only one in school.

Ranked beside Khoa

Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.

Odell^#4396 · Corwin^#4396 · Tennyson^#4396 · Marques^#4396 · Manu^#4396 · Omid^#4396 · Zackariah^#4396 · Burton^#4396

Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Khoa? See the current top 100.

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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology

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